The invention is based on a priority application EP05290737.5 which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The invention relates to a method of operating a passive optical network comprising an optical line termination being connected via optical fibers to a number of network terminations and comprising the step of generating an optical signal to be transmitted on one of the optical fibers comprising a number of signal states. The invention also relates to a corresponding passive optical network, to a corresponding optical line termination and to a corresponding network termination.
It is known to define the transmission rate within a passive optical network to a pre-defined value. Under this condition, all network terminations are able to communicate with the optical line termination.
In order to incorporate network terminations in the passive optical network that have a higher transmission rate, it is known to use several different transmission rates at least in the upstream direction. In this case, the optical line termination must be adapted to all of the used transmission rates. In order to use several transmission rates in the downstream direction, the receivers of the network terminations would have to be adapted.
However, the transmission qualities of the links between the optical line termination and the network terminations may be different or may even change from time to time. For example, changes within the passive optical fiber network may have the consequence that a specific transmission path includes an additional splitter with the result that the transmission quality of the link is reduced.
The known methods do not consider such changes of the transmission quality.